Since Congressional Democrats are finding the nerve to admit that they made some mistakes in interpreting intelligence and then again in voting for war, what else can we expect?
My personal wish list is topped by a desire that someone on the national political scene will declare with conviction that the so-called "war on terror" never was. This Cheney/Rove myth must be exposed and then destroyed before an international forum. The same soul-baring that's going on over the war vote has got to happen on a much broader scale if we're to keep from going over the brink and restore any kind of diplomatic credibility for ourselves.
(more)
I'm not denying the threat of terrorism - I know that it's real. There will always be extremists and extreme methods. As a rational person, I also know that it's a
nominal threat under normal circumstances. These are not comfortable times for rational people, though, with agitating hawks pushing circumstances farther than ever from normal. That irrationality can manufacture terrorists until this cabal's needs are met (whatever those ultimate needs are).
Never mind that we can't possibly prosecute or win wars of force on concepts like "terror" or "drugs", with no parties to hold accountable and no goals against which to gauge success. Why are even the enlightned among us susceptible to these emotion-twisting tricks? Why can't we look at the petri dish of the West Bank and Gaza and see how policy produces terrorism? We are amassing our own body of evidence for the phenomenon, and I hope that it will soon be great enough to crush this foolish, destructive meme.
Perhaps a Democratic Senator could stand up Monday morning and unflinchingly say, "The war on terror is a phantom. Stop the lies. We can only fight terror through responsible foreign policy!" Are we talking political suicide, or does common disbelief at our current situation hang thick enough in the air to support that notion?